Morning arrived like a creditor.
No tenderness. No forgiveness. Just pale light slipping through the curtain seam and landing across Ezio's face as if to say: Get up. Pay what you owe.
He lay still, staring at the ceiling, listening to his own breathing as though it belonged to someone else.
The room was small—rented, clean enough to pretend at dignity, cheap enough to punish him for wanting more. The air held the faint smell of cedar from the Pavilion's storage corridors and the lingering sweetness of last night's incense stuck in his clothes.
On the low table beside his bed lay two books.
One black. One red.
The Prince.Histoire de ma vie.
They sat there with the quiet confidence of weapons that did not need to be drawn to be dangerous.
Ezio's chest tightened when he looked at them. Not fear of pain—fear of change. The kind of fear that comes when you realize you've been walking toward a door and the door is now open.
Lucifer's voice drifted lazily across the back of his mind, like a man stretching on a throne.
"Kiddo… you didn't sleep. You just stopped moving."
Ezio swallowed. His throat felt scraped raw, as if he'd been screaming in his dreams without making a sound.
He thought of Grayhaven.
Not as a dramatic fire—no heroic blaze against the sky. Just the dry, ugly kind: grain turning to smoke, a warehouse "accident," ledgers shifting, families eating less, men growing meaner, prices creeping upward like rot.
He had watched it happen from a table.
He had profited from it.
His stomach rolled at the memory—not because he was innocent, but because he was awake enough to understand what he had done.
Then his mind betrayed him with another image—Kayra's hand resting on the red silk, the way she looked at him when she said promise me, the way her touch had been reassurance rather than seduction.
That contrast hurt more than guilt did.
Ezio sat up slowly.
The air felt heavier than usual.
Not mystical. Not dramatic.
Just… dense.
Like the room was full of invisible people waiting to see what he would do.
He reached for the black book first, because black felt safer. Cleaner. Less personal.
His fingers brushed the cover of The Prince.
The leather was cool.
He opened it and read without letting himself drift.
"A wise ruler should rely on what is his own, not on what belongs to others."
The line didn't inspire him. It carved him.
Rosa's voice echoed behind it—her calm certainty that everything was borrowed, that people were assets, that outcomes were the only morality the world respected.
Ezio turned the page, found himself reading another passage, then another, and something in his chest steadied—like tightening a belt around a wound.
Then he reached for the red book.
His Illusion Seed responded immediately, warm as breath against glass.
He hated that it responded.
He opened Histoire de ma vie and his eyes fell to a marked line—ink strokes in the margin like a hidden rhythm.
"When a woman speaks to me, I listen with my eyes."
It should have sounded playful.
Instead, it sounded like a predator describing the exact angle of a trap.
Ezio's pulse quickened. Not arousal—attention. The kind that narrows your world until only the target remains.
Lucifer chuckled.
"Oh, kiddo. It's not romance. It's architecture."
Ezio shut the book hard enough that the candle stub on the table trembled.
He stood and paced once, twice, then stopped.
If he read only The Prince, he would become a clean monster—cold, efficient, hollow.
If he read only Casanova, he would become a warm monster—beautiful, intoxicating, hollow in a different way.
If he wanted to survive without becoming empty, he needed discipline strong enough to hold both.
He sat again.
Placed the books in front of him like two bowls.
And did the most dangerous thing a weak man could do:
He began to study them together.
He didn't treat it like reading.
He treated it like cultivation.
A sequence. A structure. A method.
He read a page of Machiavelli, then a page of Casanova.
Not because it was clever.
Because his mind needed to learn that power came in two forms:
the world's obedienceandthe heart's surrender
At first, the words fought inside him.
Machiavelli spoke like a knife: fear outlasts love.Casanova spoke like velvet: safety makes people confess.
One demanded distance.The other demanded closeness.
Ezio's breathing grew shallow without him noticing.
He read about rulers who must appear merciful while doing what is necessary, then he read about how a man becomes whatever a person needs to see.
His chest tightened.
A dull pressure built behind his sternum, as if his ribs were narrowing by degrees.
He turned another page.
Men are ungrateful, fickle…
And suddenly he saw her—his ex—on the phone screen, three years of "we" dissolving into a clean "goodbye." He saw his own messages, pathetic, begging, the bootlicker running after a closed door.
His fingers trembled against the paper.
He wanted to throw both books across the room.
He didn't.
He kept reading.
Because suffering was the only honest teacher he had ever had.
Hours passed. The light shifted. The room warmed. Then cooled again.
At some point he realized he was not just reading lines.
He was being rewritten by them.
Every sentence was a chisel.
Every chapter was a pressure plate.
His Illusion Seed stirred with hunger, and his Machiavelli Seed answered with restraint, and the clash between them sent thin pains up his spine like wires tightening.
Lucifer's voice softened into something almost intimate.
"Kiddo… you're forcing two gods to share a temple."
Ezio swallowed hard and set the books down.
Enough.
If he continued like this without stabilizing, he would crack.
He moved to the bare patch of floor, sat cross-legged, and closed his eyes.
No dramatics.
No chanting.
Just breath.
In… hold… out.
He let the air fill his lungs and tried to gather his scattered self.
He found the seeds first, the way Rosa taught him:
Machiavelli Seed — cool, dense, sharp-edged.
Illusion Seed — warm, fluid, responsive.
They weren't cores. Not yet. Not even stable.
But they were alive.
Ezio sank inward and began the stabilizing cycle:
draw breath into the lower abdomen
guide it up the spine
let it settle behind the heart
release
Simple.
Grounded.
Repeatable.
It worked—for a few breaths.
Then the memory of the Board returned.
Grayhaven.
The warehouse.
The arson that wasn't a blade but still cut.
He felt the smallest flicker of satisfaction—because he won.
That flicker disgusted him.
His Illusion Seed warmed at the emotion.
His Machiavelli Seed tightened to restrain it.
The two energies met like opposing tides.
Ezio's breath hitched.
His chest pressure grew.
He tried to steady it with discipline.
In… hold… out.
But Casanova's words rose now, uninvited.
Safety.
Confession.
Mirror.
Anchor.
He remembered Kayra saying his name—how her body had responded before her mind decided to.
He remembered her fear afterward.
Not of him being charming.
Of him becoming something that could turn intimacy into leverage.
Ezio's heart stuttered.
The pressure behind his sternum sharpened into heat.
Not burning like fire.
Burning like compression.
Like something inside him was being forced into shape.
Lucifer's voice became sharp, alert.
"Careful, kiddo."
Ezio tried to stop.
Tried to open his eyes.
His body didn't listen.
His seeds were moving now without permission—drawn into each other by the tension he had created.
The Illusion Seed spun, pulling in emotion like silk drawn into a spindle.
The Machiavelli Seed tightened around it like a ring of iron.
Ezio's breath came in ragged gasps.
His hands clenched on his knees.
The pressure became unbearable.
He felt as if his heart was being encircled by an invisible band that grew smaller with every breath.
His vision went white behind his eyelids.
He tasted copper.
He tried to force the cycle again—stabilize, release, stabilize—but the energies ignored him. The knowledge from the books had become a storm inside his ribs.
Then—without warning—everything snapped into alignment.
Not a shattering.
A lock.
A quiet, merciless click.
The pressure vanished all at once.
Ezio's whole body jerked forward as if released from chains he didn't know he wore. He slammed a palm onto the floor, sucking air like he'd been drowning.
Silence filled his skull.
Not empty silence.
Structured silence.
He pressed a trembling hand to his chest.
He could feel it there.
Not metal.
Not physical.
A concept made real.
A circle around his heart, faintly pulsing, faintly alive.
The Casanova Ring.
It didn't shine.
It didn't announce itself.
It simply existed, the way gravity exists.
Lucifer exhaled a laugh so quiet it sounded like respect.
"Kiddo… that's not an artifact. That's a verdict."
Ezio sat there, shaking, sweat cooling on his skin, trying to understand what had happened.
He hadn't received treasure.
He had crystallized into a role.
An archetype.
A man who could shape desire the way cultivators shaped qi.
His stomach turned—not because the ring felt evil, but because it felt useful.
And usefulness was the first step toward justification.
Ezio closed his eyes and tested his senses.
At first, nothing.
Then the room… spoke.
Not with words.
With currents.
He felt the residue of loneliness in the bed linens, faint but real.
He felt the anxiety in the cheap wooden frame—worry soaked into a place that housed too many desperate tenants.
He felt, far away, the Velvet Pavilion's pulse—desire and secrecy like music through walls.
It wasn't mind reading.
It was motivation reading.
Emotion as weather.
Ezio's throat tightened.
He opened his eyes, stared at his own hands, and realized with a cold clarity:
From now on, the world would not only see him.
It would respond to him.
And that power—subtle, intimate, invisible—could rot him faster than any sword ever could.
Night came.
He went to the Pavilion because routine was a rope, and he needed something to hold.
Lanterns warmed the air. Music softened the edges of thought. Laughter rose and fell like tide.
Ezio stepped inside and nearly flinched.
The emotional field hit him like scent.
Desire—thick near the dance floor.Insecurity—sharp around the noble booths.Fear—thin but present near the exits.Greed—steady, everywhere.
It wasn't overwhelming exactly.
It was loud in a way he could no longer ignore.
He walked to the bar, forcing himself to breathe normally.
Kayra looked up—and froze.
Not dramatically.
Just a subtle stillness in her shoulders, like a fox sensing a trap.
Her gray eyes sharpened.
Ezio saw it instantly:
Concern first.Then fear.Then a protective anger she buried under calm.
She felt him.
Not the way people felt beauty.
The way animals felt a storm approaching.
"You…" Kayra's voice softened, then tightened. "What did you do today?"
Ezio swallowed.
Lucifer purred.
"Tell her, kiddo. Tell her you're becoming irresistible in the worst way."
Ezio ignored him and kept his tone careful.
"I studied," he said.
Kayra's eyes didn't leave his face. "That's not all."
Ezio poured water into a glass, because his hands needed something honest to do.
His voice came out low. "Something formed."
Kayra's ears twitched—an involuntary tell.
"What formed?" she asked.
Ezio met her gaze, and the Casanova Ring pulsed gently, as if recognizing her as the first true anchor it had ever touched.
He hated that pulse.
He held his discipline like a blade.
"A structure," he said. "Inside."
Kayra's expression tightened. "From the book."
Ezio didn't deny it.
Kayra's voice dropped to a whisper. "Does it make people want you?"
Ezio's throat tightened.
He looked away briefly, as if shame needed distance.
"I think," he said slowly, "it makes people… lean."
Kayra inhaled through her nose, eyes narrowing—not at him, but at the invisible thing around him.
Then she leaned forward, close enough that her breath brushed his cheek.
She wasn't seducing him.
She was testing him.
Ezio felt it instantly—her emotional field, her guarded warmth, her caution.
The ring responded, eager.
Ezio strangled the response with discipline.
Kayra's eyes searched his. "And can you stop it?"
Ezio's voice went rough. "I have to."
Kayra studied him for a long, quiet moment.
Then she did something that hurt more than anger would have.
She reached beneath the bar and placed a small plate in front of him.
Food.
Simple.
Grounding.
"Eat," she murmured. "Before you forget what a body needs."
Ezio's chest tightened unexpectedly.
He sat, took a bite, and realized how close he'd been to becoming pure mind.
Pure outcome.
Pure strategy.
Hollow.
Kayra watched him chew as if making sure he remained human.
Then she said softly, almost to herself, "Rosa will like this."
Ezio looked up.
Kayra's gray eyes were hard now.
"She'll try to use it," Kayra whispered. "She'll call it a weapon. She'll call you an asset."
Ezio swallowed.
"I'm not hers."
Kayra's gaze softened by a fraction, but fear still lived behind it.
"Then don't become her kind of man," she said.
Ezio stared at the candlelight reflecting in the bottles, at the way patrons laughed with teeth that didn't reach their eyes, at the way desire moved through the room like smoke.
He felt the Casanova Ring breathe around his heart—quiet, patient, alive.
He felt the Machiavelli Seed steady in his core—cold, sharp, waiting.
Two paths.
Two books.
Two kinds of conquest.
Lucifer's voice curled around the moment, amused and cruelly tender.
"Kiddo… you wanted to stop begging. Now the world will beg back—without knowing why. Just remember: it's easy to become loved. Hard to stay human."
Ezio exhaled slowly.
He stood behind the bar, poured drinks, listened to secrets, and kept his face calm.
But inside, he promised himself something no book could teach:
He would not let the ring decide who he was.
He would decide.
Even if that decision hurt.
Even if discipline felt like starvation.
Because the most dangerous thing about the forbidden path wasn't power.
It was how naturally power tried to rewrite the man holding it.